If something about this animation strikes you as unfamiliar, don't worry, you're not imagining things; though the Moon does rotate about its axis as it orbits Earth, you've never in your life seen it spin quite like this.

The Moon is tidally locked to Earth, forever hiding one of its faces from those of us kicking it planetside. Owing to a phenomenon known as libration, it's actually possible to spot as much as 59% of the Moon's surface. But the remaining 41% – the so-called "far side," was for many years a complete mystery.

But this video, created from images returned by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, offers us an entirely different view of the Moon – one that brings its enigmatic far-side into clear (and, contrary to its "dark-side" misnomer, clearly illuminated) view:

If you get bored, go into Google Earth and you can check out the moon in its entirety. If you look at the poles of the moon though, that is where the action is. The North and South poles get pummeled much more so than the overall surface. Not sure what the science involved is, but its a trip to look at.

MontanaHawk05 wrote:How odd that the near side of the moon is the one with almost all the dark areas.

I was just thinking the same thing, I thought the other side woul just be demolished lol.

Ummmm, I believe those dark spaces are what are called 'mares' or seas. Those are the relatively flat areas. The far side of the moon is actually more 'demolished' than the near side IIRC. That's because, much like the Moon screens the Earth from many meteor strikes, the Earth does the same for the moon, but primarily on the near side.

Now go find the astronomical proof that I'm full of it.

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